It is one of the few examples of religious architecture having a combined wooden and stone structure. Also noteworthy are the valuable, well-preserved, Baroque wall paintings on the north wall of the nave, depicting the Passion, made in the years 1667-1668.

History

The first information concerning the existence of the village of Ostropa comes from 1286. According to a survey, the first wooden church was built at this site in c. 1340. The structure was destroyed during the Hussite Wars (1419-c. 1433), however, it was quickly reconstructed by the local parish community. In 1640, the church underwent full-scale renovations during which a side altar was installed. In the 1640s, the building was destroyed again: it was set on fire by Swedish troops. According to some historians, the chancel and its fittings survived the fire. The present chancel and sacristy come from 1668, from church reconstruction works which were commenced a year before and which shaped the current appearance of the building. The Church of St George was dedicated by the auxiliary bishop Elias von Sommerfelds in 1719. The oldest part of the church is the tower which, according to dendrochronological studies, comes from the 1540s. From the 2nd half of the 18th century until 1807, the church was an auxiliary church for the Parish of All Saints in Gliwice. The situation changed in 1807: until 1926, the church served as a parish church for the people of Ostropa, until a new stone church was erected. The church has not been used since 1927. In 1965, numerous maintenance works were carried out in the church, including the reconstruction of the roof, whose form was changed from a flat one to a sloped one. Moreover, a reinforced concrete surround was made around the structure.

Description

The Church of St George is located on a small hill in the western district of Gliwice, Ostropa, at Piekarska Street. The building is enclosed with a partially preserved stone and brick wall and surrounded by single old trees.

The church has a combined stone and wooden structure. It has no distinct stylistic features, with the exception of the buttressed chancel, Gothic in character. The oriented church consists of three basic component parts: a stone chancel terminating in a semi-hexagon, a slightly wider nave, made of wooden logs and resting on brick foundations, with walls covered with wood shingles, and a tower on a square floor plan, having a post-and-beam structure and containing a porch. The church also has a sacristy, adjoining the north wall of the chancel, built of stone on a rectangular floor plan, and a wooden porch adjoining the north wall of the nave, built on a floor plan having the shape of an elongated rectangle, containing a side entrance to the church and the sacristy. The main component part is covered with a gable roof passing into a three-pitched roof above the apse. An additional decorative element is the octagonal steeple located over the nave, topped with a lantern with an onion-shaped cupola. The tower, situated in the eastern part, is covered with a pyramid hip roof. The chancel is covered with a cross-barrel vault with lunettes. The ceilings over the nave are flat. The windows are headed by round arches. On the west side, there is a simple, wooden music gallery supported by two cast iron posts. The church interior has no original elements; some of them were moved to the new parish church in Ostropa and the Diocesan Museum in Opole. Particularly notable are the partially preserved Baroque wall paintings from the years 1667-1668.

The building can be visited from the outside.

compiled by Agata Mucha, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Katowice, 12-09-2014.

Bibliography

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